Complete Story

11/22/2017

A call for psychiatrists with clozapine expertise in schizophrenia

Source: Current Psychiatry

As reported recently in the publication, Current Psychiatry, there is a call for readers of Current Psychiatry who are prescribing clozapine to their patients and who practice in settings that can accommodate additional patients seeking clozapine treatment to join a panel of experts. The hope is to get up to 100 experts to join this national panel, which we are calling CLOSZE (Clozapine Schizophrenia Experts). The mission is to "close" the door on disability among persons living with schizophrenia. Jonathan Meyer, MD, Deputy Editor of Current Psychiatry, a member of the Board of Trustees of the CURESZ Foundation, and a national clozapine expert, will serve as the Chair of the CLOSZE Panel.

The CURESZ Foundation was founded in 2016 to bring hope to people suffering from schizophrenia and those who love and care for them. CURESZ was established by Bethany Yeiser and her psychiatrist, Henry Nasrallah, MD, and was inspired by Bethany's complete recovery from schizophrenia after 4 years of delusions, hallucinations, homelessness, and disability. Bethany returned to her normal life and graduated from college with honors, thanks to clozapine, which cured her symptoms when several other medications did not work (for more of Bethany's story, see http://bit.ly/2wViSry).

One of the major initiatives of CURESZ is to promote the use of clozapine, which is vastly underused despite the fact that it is the only medication approved by the FDA for schizophrenia that fails to improve with other antipsychotics and for schizophrenia patients with a history of suicidality. It is estimated that of the 2.5 million people living with schizophrenia in the United States, approximately 500,000 have not had a chance to receive clozapine to possibly recover and overcome their vocational and social disability. To increase the chance that a patient suffering from treatment-resistant schizophrenia can receive a trial of clozapine, CURESZ is assembling a panel of clozapine experts around the United States to serve as a referral base.

If you would like to join CLOSZE, please go to https://curesz.org/closze-panel and enter your name, email, work address, and office phone. Those in charge of this initiative will later organize the list by state and city so that patients and families around the country can contact the nearest expert to receive an evaluation for a possible clinical trial.